I'm No Longer a Virgin...in the Digital Camera World! (Kodak Easyshare CX7530)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Kodak Easyshare CX7530
Date:	21/05/05 (487 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use, 5.0 Megapixels, Great results

Disadvantages: You may not want to pay this much, Costing in accessories

Well the thing is I’ve never owned a camera. I know that’s hard to believe and sad for a man of 40 but it’s just the way my life has panned out. So when I booked my much publicised trip to New York I simply had to get me a digital camera. Of course, the trouble was I knew nothing about digital cameras. Soooooooo………

I researched the market. This involved scanning several websites, reading the Argos guide to digital cameras (brief but helpful), talking to friends and having a look through “What Camera” magazine. This all sounds a lot of palaver but it was a big commitment and needed to be right. The only drawback with all of this is that I left it to the week before I went away and so missed out on a great deal over the Net!

The big win with a digital camera is that there is no longer any need for film. APS cameras moved things on but digital cameras store images as files in a digital memory. This means that the quality of photos is so much better than ever before and there is so much more that you can do with the resultant files. You can also develop your own photos with photographic quality paper freely available in suitable outlets and via the Web.

I decided on the Kodak CX7530 and this is why:

*** Resolution***
The quality of the pictures is measured in megapixels and the higher the counter the better the picture. I’d been told to use 4.0 megapixels as a minimum benchmark but this one came with 5.0, which should mean a high quality result at a value for money cost. The cheaper models come with a lower megapixel count but that means that the resolution of the final product is not as good as there is less detail in the image.

*** Brand***
The digital camera market is a cut throat place. With big hitters like Canon, Fuji, Minolta and Olympus to name but a few it can be a difficult choice but I went with Kodak as they have been established in the photographic market ever since George Eastman set the ball rolling in the 19th century. His Eastman Kodak Company has been at the forefront of developments in photography for many decades since although any competitive advantage Kodak had over other companies went a long time ago with the entrance of the Japanese companies into the technology markets. Nevertheless, Kodak is a world-wide brand with the service back up if anything goes wrong so seemed a sensible choice.

*** Taking pictures***
The CX7530 comes with a 3x optical zoom lens allowing for scope with choice of shots. With 9 scene and colour modes and an easy to use configuration on the back panel, this was ideal for a beginner like me. The instruction book that came with it tells you how to use the various modes such as night mode, portrait and so on. The ability to view find either conventionally through an eye-hole or by using the viewing panel on the back made taking pictures a doddle. All I would say is to remember to use the sports mode for piccies where folks are moving around. I used night mode for shots in Grand Central Station and they came out blurred *sigh*

*** Video***
There is a TV-quality (VGA) continuous video featuring audio playback allowing short video clips to be taken Generally heavy on battery power I’ve yet to use this in a big way preferring to stick with stills for now. Then again, we did take a digital camcorder to the US so we didn't need to use this anyway.

*** Facilities***
The CX7530 comes with software that, once loaded, allows easy transfer of pictures to PC. An Ethernet connection from the back of the camera plugs into a port in the back of your PC and the software does the rest. I didn’t buy a camera dock at the time as I didn’t realise what they did but camera docks make transfers even easier although you need to weigh up the benefits versus the costs of purchasing a dock as the software should suffice.

As mentioned above, because the photos are stored on memory, it is possible to manipulate them. Red eye reduction, adjusting backgrounds to make them lighter and crop and rotate are just a few of the things you can do to edit the final result. It's surprising how different you can make the image!

*** Size and weight***
I wanted something fairly dinky so that I didn’t get in the way of things. The CX7530 fits snugly into an average hand and is lightweight enough to pop into a trouser pocket. To tell you the truth, I suspect the size and weight is par for the course for digital cameras which are pretty small these days.

*** Appearance***
The CX7530 is quite a nifty looking beast what with it being silver coloured and all. The optical zoom is nicely tucked away until you turn it on so it has a great compact appearance that means you are proud to carry it around.

*** Battery Life***
The camera came with 2 lithium batteries although these were soon spent over in New York. I wish I’d have bought some re-chargeable batteries to take over there as I ended up resorting to buying normal AA batteries. These didn’t last long at all. You can get re-chargeable batteries together with a charger from the Ukcamera site from £19.99 upwards. Alternatively, the camera dock will charge the batteries for you if you choose to buy one.

---The results---
I took around 40 stills in New York and was delighted with the results. The software made transfer easy to my PC setting up an album for the stills. For the first time I could get my pictures at full screen size and editing and utilising them is now a cinch. The jpeg format means that I no longer need the scanner to put the pictures on my homepage and if I want to e-mail the pictures to family and friends then this is easy too!

--Drawbacks—
You will be able to buy cheaper cameras than this one. It is still easy to come by beginners' digital cameras at well under a £100. However, you won’t get the picture quality of this model. Conversely, you can pay a lot more than the sum I paid if you want to head towards the Pro’s standards. Megapixels get higher still but I wanted value for money with the best quality I could get so the CX7530 was the one for me.

Also, like most digital cameras, the CX7530 comes with an internal memory but that means you will only get approx 20 photos with that kind of capacity. Inevitably, you'll be forced to buy a memory card which is a small computer chip that fits into a slot at the side of the camera. This suddenly increases the memory so that capacity shoots up to 200 or so images but you will have to either pay for it an an extra or buy it as part of the package when you buy the camera.

--Conclusion--
I bought my camera from Argos for £179.99. It had apparently been reduced from £229.99 but using the quick pay facility meant that I wasn’t told that it didn’t come with a memory card as advertised in their brochure. I had to go back on the day of our flight to the States to buy a 256MB memory card for another £39.99. The total of approx £240 would have been beaten easily by Ukdigitalcameras.co.uk who are selling this model for £169.99 together with a 256MB SD card i.e. I would have saved £50 if I’d have done the deal through them *groan* My friend bought his from this site and said the service was fine. The Dooyoo site shows deals from £114 at Pixmania so it would be well worth checking out the package on offer to see if you can get the cost down further.

I haven’t covered all of the things that the CX7530 can do by any stretch of the imagination but I hope the main points above give you a flavour of what the camera can do.

I would recommend the CX7530 to those wanting an easy to use camera aimed at beginners but has more about it than most middle of the market digital cameras. I would definitely go to http://www.ukdigitalcameras.co.uk or call them on 0845 123 5 345 to avoid making the same mistake as I did unless you spot a better deal elsewhere! Well I hope I haven’t bored you all too much and have a nice weekend y’hear!

Thanks for reading

Marandina

Spec for tech heads:

Pixels CCD 5 millions pixels
Resolution 2560 x 1920 pixels
Optical Optical Viewfinder Yes (direct viewfinding)
LCD display High resolution LCD TFT 4,6 cm screen
Macro Distance N/A
Normal Distance 60 cm to infinity
Optical Zoom 3x (equivalent to 34-102 mm)
Digital Zoom 5x
ISO range Mode auto and 80/100/200/400/800
Aperture and Shutter Speed Aperture: f/2.7-5.2
Shutter speed: 1/2-1/1 400 sec.
Flash (built-in) Auto - On/Off - Red eye reduction - add-on
Storage Image formats Photo: JPEG (EXIF 2.2)
Video: Quicktime MOV (MPEG-4)
Memory Card Type Slot Secure Digital/MultimediaCard
Included Memory None
Internal Memory Internal memory 32 Mb
Video Video Sequence Video MPEG-4 with sound
video mode : 640x 480 pixels (VGA) to 13 images per second
Video mode : 320 x240 pixels (QVGA) to 20 images per second
TV Out composite output A/V PAL/NTSC
Webcam No
Computer InterFace Port USB1.1
PictBridge
Connection interface to KODAK docking/printing station
Wireless function No
Compatibility PC: Microsoft Windows 98/98 Second edition/Me/2000/XP
Mac: OS X (v10.2.3, 10.3), SAFARI (v1.0 or higher)
Included softwares KODAK EASYSHARE software

Summary: